


Greed

by bilboh



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Marriage, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilboh/pseuds/bilboh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unrequited love. A stupidly sentimental idea. Sherlock would wonder why it happens if it wasn't happening to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greed

**Author's Note:**

> Unrequited love is the worst/best thing ever. This is a reeeeeally dumb thing that I started a while ago and put on hold because I wanted to make it longer. I ended up not being able to do that. Sorry if it sucks.

When something terrible happens, you often find that every bone in your body knows, that you’re scrambling for breath, before you can fully process what’s happening.

It’s a cold morning, and her name is Mary.

John grins sheepishly. “I, uh, I met her at work.”

Sherlock’s stomach turns.

She’s friendly, she’s intelligent, and she has her life together. She’s pretty in the quietest way, the way that John would truly appreciate.

She extends her hand to shake. Sherlock stares at her. She smiles.

She’s patient. That’s how he knows it’s over.

~

“What do you think of her?”

“She’s brilliant.”

John’s raises his eyebrows, half in amazement and half in delight. “Really? What’s the matter with you?”

Sherlock swallows down all of the words that threaten to fall and shatter on the floor. “Yes. And nothing.”

John’s lips form a perfect crooked smile. Sherlock wants to grab him by the shoulders and scream at him.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that everything is going to change.

He doesn’t know Sherlock Holmes is in love with him.

Did he ever know?

Sherlock was so devastatingly wrong.

~

They’re at a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, and the elephant in the room seems to be stealing all of the air. After a basket of bread, and much silence on Sherlock’s part, John excuses himself to the restroom. Sherlock tries his hardest to look invested in the wine selection.

Mary is staring right through him, and it makes him want to smack her. “I won’t try and get in the middle of you two, you know. I wouldn't do that to John.”

Sherlock doesn’t even look up. He believes her. But it’s not her choice at all.

The issue is not Mary—it's incredibly likely that Mary would want to befriend Sherlock, given the chance. And the truth is that Sherlock sees potential in her too. But therein lies the problem.

While both Mary and Sherlock are perfectly aware of their differences, Mary can serve the same purpose for John as Sherlock did, maybe better than Sherlock did. Mary probably surprises John all the time, makes him laugh, scoff, and gaze at her in amazement and admiration. But Mary also probably wants kids, loves to cook, and has John's best intentions in mind always.

Mary fits into the life John imagines for himself, and Sherlock does not. That’s that.

~

John doesn’t come home the next night.

Sherlock doesn’t sleep. He tries not to shoot the wall.

~

He is curled up on the sofa with his back turned to the world when he hears the door open. He is still in his clothes from the day before.

John curses quietly to himself and opens the curtains. The sunlight pierces Sherlock’s eyes and Sherlock can't help but think that it’s disgustingly, poetically ironic. The things we need for life so often can hurt us without meaning to.

John chuckles giddily and settles on the chair next to the couch.

“Blimey, she’s perfect.”

Sherlock doesn’t move.

“I brought leftovers. She cooks too, can you believe it?”

He tries to sound careless but it comes out as a pathetic mumble in a quiet voice. “Not hungry.”

John sighs. “I’m going to shower. Have something, will you?”

It doesn’t make any sense, but Sherlock wants John to be sorry. He wants him to apologize for all of this raucous that he caused. He wants John to engulf Sherlock in his arms and let Sherlock keep his face in John’s neck.

Sherlock wants John to feel guilty. But he doesn’t really. Of course he doesn’t. John hasn’t done anything wrong.

But if not John, then who?

Sherlock’s eyes prickle and burn and he wants to smack himself for it.                                                  

~

The heaviness in Sherlock’s chest grows only greater when soaking in his self-pity as he buries himself under the duvet. He wants to throw up. He feels idiotic.

This was never supposed to happen. It was going to be two of them against the world.

They were going to die hand in hand.

Sherlock knows what it is to be alone. But he has never once felt so lonely.

He hates Mary. He hates himself. He hates John. And he doesn’t even care.

~

In the following week he only sees John once. John texts him, but Sherlock never replies.

It’s a Wednesday night when he comes home from a crime scene and sees John sitting in the living room with a book.

He looks at the cover and guesses the entire plot. There was a time that John would have told him he was fantastic and Sherlock would have felt like he won the lottery.

But now John is so much happier with so much less. He’s jaded, Sherlock supposes. After all, people whom in their lives know nothing but three-story houses and small white dogs are so enthralled by polluted cities and Indian slums. 

And so Sherlock now decides to blame himself. The fault jumps between him and John, you see, because he doesn’t know what hurts more. 

John smiles. It’s so genuine and it pulls the pin on Sherlock’s heart. “Where’ve you been?”

Would John have smiled at him like that before all this? Sherlock can’t remember.

“Triple homicide. You’d have liked it.” The last bit slips out from under his tongue before he can catch it.

“Insane as it is, I do miss it. Why don’t you ever invite me, you big prat?” The insult is full of fondness and it makes Sherlock sick. He feels like he’s being mocked.

Funnily, it’s the exact opposite.

John is pouring what isn’t for Mary into Sherlock, and Sherlock curses himself for feeling so empty.

Greed is a sin, after all. 

~

Sherlock tries to be happy for John. He doesn’t know if he wants to be, though.

The simple truth is doesn’t know how.

Selfishness is a curse when what you want is impossible.

~

Mary can prove herself. She’s perfect for John in the way Sherlock never could be.

She doesn’t interfere if John wants to scurry about with Sherlock during an investigation. Not only that, she’s actually interested in hearing John babble about the cases. While she’s no Sherlock Holmes, she’s definitely clever, more so than John. He can admire her without being belittled. But they’re still on the same level. She can still sympathize with him.

She can make him happy. Truly happy.

The fact that Sherlock couldn’t do that—that’s what undoes him every night. 

~

When it comes, it doesn’t matter how much he expected or prepared for it. It doesn’t matter. When the words come out of John’s mouth, Sherlock’s chest crumbles and his blood turns to tar. 

“I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Wonderful.” It sounds lifeless and his mouth is dry. He hopes John hears it.

He doesn’t.

“It is. God, it is. Will she say yes?”

Sherlock closes his eyes. It’s a stupid question. “Yes.”

John grins. “She will, won’t she?” And it’s a statement, not a question.

Sherlock can’t help the bitterness that seeps through his teeth. “You know I loathe repetition.”

John groans. “You don’t have to be so pissy. It’s not like I’m moving to bloody Tibet. We’ll always be best mates, I’ll always be here.”

I’ll always be here.

Sherlock wants to believe it. He so badly does. But he's not a fool.

That's a lie. He became the biggest fool in the world as soon as he let himself believe that John truly desired to spend his life with him.

But the depth of John’s lack of understanding almost makes Sherlock want to laugh. Laugh, groan, scream, sob into John’s shirt as John pets his hair and tells him he'll stay. He'll stay for him.

He does not do any of these things.

Instead, he smiles, and it hurts. It truly does. 

~

Sherlock forgets to eat these days.

Instead, he sits with his head in his hands and tries so hard to take back his life from someone who never even tried to steal it. 

~

John officially moves out of the flat, and every trace of him is gone.

It leaves a gaping hole—the lack of brown shoes next to the door, silly books missing from the coffee table, none of his sweaters decorating the living room.

John’s warmth that could melt away the icy shield that Sherlock grew around himself would no longer be Sherlock’s saving grace.

He is gone.

Even so, Sherlock sees John everywhere. He sees those remarkable hands gently curled around a teacup, or steadily wrapped around a handgun.

He sees his eyes in the mirrors and his smile in the dimples of the bedclothes.

It is then that Sherlock realizes he has no home now, because his way home was through John Watson.

~

Sherlock cannot fathom why it feels like John Watson has left him forever.

What a stupid thing to say, of course he can. But he wishes he couldn't.

He knows exactly how this is going to unravel.

In one month John will come over for lunch with Mary. It will be silent and horrendous and Sherlock will not know him at all.

In three months John will stop coming over but will call once in a while to check in. Sherlock will tell him he is doing fine and hang up the phone when he runs out of breath.

In six months Sherlock will get an invitation for the wedding. He will go, and he will excuse himself not long after it begins. He will not come back. Instead, he will lie down on his sofa, forget to turn on the heater, and develop a relationship with sleeping pills.

In one year John will begin calling him on holidays. Sherlock will respond sometimes.

And it’s not John’s fault. Sherlock knows it’s not. You can’t put all of the hope in the world into one human being. You can’t.

~

When you give a dog kibble, he will eat it when he needs to. When you give a dog meat, he will devour it until there is nothing left, and still expect more.

~

There won't be anyone like John. How could there be? How could there be another human being like that? Most people probably think that John Watson is an incredibly ordinary man. He is, yet not for Sherlock.

Stupid, like everyone else, but aware of it. Loyal, but far from clingy. Reasonable. Steady. Warm.

Beautiful.

No, not beautiful. What an ugly word.

They completed each other—a sickeningly sweet thing to say, but utterly truthful. They filled each other's gaps. John simply needed a post-war adventure. Sherlock needed someone to believe in him.

Adventures are temporary.

~

Some days when he's drinking tea alone in the flat, Sherlock wonders if this could have gone any other way. Would he really have been motivated to initiate anything if he had not been faced with the end?

No.

Well...

There were times when all he could notice were John’s lips.

There were the times when the two of them were overdosed with the adrenaline of barely escaping with their lives. The times where they would stare at each other, their foreheads nearly grazing, just breathing. Sherlock was sure those times meant something. He was so sure. He thought it was only a matter of waiting.

Some days Sherlock remembers the feeling of John’s hand clasped in his. It was warm and steady. It felt like John’s hands could hold him and all of the extra weight he carries in his head.

It was just that once. But Sherlock won’t forget. He won’t forget how it felt. How could he?

Sherlock lies his head down on the kitchen table and draws circles with his fingers.

Someone like Sherlock Holmes can’t easily forget someone like John Watson.

And Sherlock doesn’t want to forget him. Not even a little bit.

He curses himself out loud.


End file.
